Bing Places for Business: Is It Worth Setting Up in the UK?

If you've just finished setting up your Google Business Profile, there's a decent chance someone has told you to "do Bing too, while you're at it." Here's the honest answer to whether that's worth your time: yes, briefly — but only after Google, and only if you're not expecting much from it.

In short

Bing Places for Business is free to set up, takes about 30 minutes if your Google Business Profile is already sorted, and captures a small but real slice of UK search traffic. It's worth doing. It is not a growth channel, and nobody should treat it as one. If you've got spare capacity after getting your Google listing right, claim your Bing listing too. If you haven't finished the Google work yet, do that first — it's where the calls actually come from.

What Bing Places actually is

Bing Places for Business is Microsoft's equivalent of Google Business Profile: a free listing that lets you control how your business shows up in Bing search results and on Bing Maps — name, address, phone number, hours, category, photos, and a short description, all editable from a dashboard you claim and verify.

The mechanics are close enough to GBP that if you've already been through that process, nothing here will feel unfamiliar. The difference is scale. Bing doesn't have a "map pack" in the way most UK searchers think of Google's three-listing box, and the volume of people searching on Bing for local trades and services is a fraction of what Google sees. That's the honest starting point for deciding whether it's worth your time.

Realistic UK search share, without the invented numbers

We're not going to hand you a precise market-share percentage here, because any figure we quoted would either be out of date by the time you read it or borrowed from a source with its own reasons to inflate or deflate it. What's worth knowing instead is the honest why behind Bing's UK presence, because it explains where the traffic actually comes from.

Windows ships with Edge set as the default browser and Bing as the default search engine. A meaningful number of people never change either setting — not because they prefer Bing, but because changing defaults isn't something most people think to do. That alone keeps a steady trickle of searches flowing through Bing that has nothing to do with anyone actively choosing it over Google.

The more recent factor is Copilot. Microsoft's AI assistant, built into Windows and Edge, draws on Bing's index and local business data to answer questions — including local ones, like "is there a plumber near me open now." As more people use Copilot for exactly that kind of query, an accurate Bing Places listing becomes the thing feeding those answers, in the same way your Google Business Profile feeds AI Overviews on Google's side.

None of that adds up to Bing rivalling Google for UK local search. It doesn't, and pretending otherwise would be exactly the kind of overstated advice this article is trying to avoid. But "small" isn't the same as "zero," and a listing that costs nothing and takes half an hour to set up is a reasonable trade against a genuinely non-zero slice of traffic.

Who should actually bother

This isn't a job for everyone, and it isn't a job for right now if you haven't finished the bigger one.

Bother with it if: your Google Business Profile is already claimed, fully completed, and being actively maintained — reviews responded to, photos current, categories accurate — and you've got half an hour spare that isn't better spent elsewhere in your local SEO work.

Skip it for now if: your Google Business Profile still has gaps, you haven't worked through the fundamentals, or you're weighing up where limited time is best spent. Google Business Profile optimisation is where the leverage is for a UK business — Bing Places is a mop-up task for afterwards, not a parallel priority.

If you're not sure which camp you're in, our guide to setting up a Google Business Profile is the place to start. Come back to Bing once that's actually done, not half-finished.

Setting up and claiming a Bing Places listing

The process is straightforward, and most of it will feel familiar if you've been through Google's version.

1. Go to Bing Places for Business and sign in with a Microsoft account (or create one — it's free).
2. Search for your business to check whether a listing already exists. Bing sometimes generates a basic profile automatically from other web data, the same way Google does, and you'll want to claim that existing one rather than create a duplicate.
3. Import from Google Business Profile, if offered. Bing has historically provided an import option that pulls across your basic details from an existing GBP listing — name, address, phone, category, hours. Where it's available, it's the fastest route to a filled-in listing, but treat it as a first draft rather than a finished job.
4. Fill in or correct every field manually. Check the imported details against your actual Google Business Profile line by line — category naming conventions differ slightly between platforms, and photos in particular tend not to carry over and need re-uploading directly.
5. Verify the listing. Bing typically verifies by phone, postcard, or email, depending on your business type and location. Follow whichever method it offers; there's no shortcut around verification, and an unverified listing carries far less weight.

That's the whole job. There's no ongoing content strategy required, no posting schedule to maintain — set it up correctly once, and check back on it occasionally rather than treating it as another platform demanding weekly attention.

What to reuse from your GBP work, and what needs its own attention

Most of the heavy lifting is already done if your Google Business Profile is solid, but a few things genuinely need separate treatment rather than a straight copy-paste.

Reuse directly: your NAP details (name, address, phone number) should be identical to your GBP and every other citation — this is exactly the same consistency principle covered in our local SEO checklist, and it applies to Bing exactly as much as it does to any other directory. Your primary category and service list should also carry across largely as-is, since the underlying business hasn't changed.

Needs its own attention: photos almost always need re-uploading rather than syncing automatically. Your business description is worth writing fresh rather than reusing word-for-word, since Bing's field lengths and formatting don't always match Google's. And verification is a separate process on Bing's own timeline — don't assume being verified on Google carries any weight with Bing's verification team.

What not to expect

Being blunt about this matters more than the setup steps. Bing Places will not move your ranking, your call volume, or your booking numbers on its own. It's not a growth channel, and any advice suggesting it is — "Bing is an untapped opportunity your competitors are ignoring!" — is overselling a hygiene task as a strategy.

What it genuinely does is close a small gap: it makes sure your business shows up correctly for the minority of UK searchers who land on Bing, whether through a Windows default they never changed or a Copilot query about something local. That's a real but modest benefit, and treating it as anything bigger sets you up to be disappointed by a tool that was never designed to be your primary channel.

Where Bing fits alongside your Google work

Think of Bing Places as the last item on the list, not the first. Get your Google Business Profile properly built out — categories, services, photos, reviews, the full picture — because that's where the overwhelming majority of UK local search happens and where a properly optimised profile earns its keep. Once that's genuinely done, Bing Places is a sensible half-hour addition that costs nothing and closes a small, honest gap. Just don't let it distract from the platform that actually matters.